Modern farming practices strive to increase yields of agricultural fields. Technological advances in the area of planting implements or planters allow for better agronomic characteristics at the time of planting, such as providing more accurate seed depth, improved uniformity of seed depth across the planter, and improved accuracy of in-row seed spacing. However, a single field can have performance inconsistencies between different areas of the field. That is because a field can have a wide variety of soil types and management zones, such as irrigated and non-irrigated zones in different areas. To address this issue, seed companies have developed multiple varieties of each of their seed product types, with the different varieties offering improved performance characteristics for different types of soil and management practices.
In this regard, efforts have been made to plant multiple varieties of a particular seed product type in different areas of fields with different soil types or management zones. For example, planters have been developed that include separate bulk fill hoppers for different seed varieties and that require the reservoir for each seed meter be completely cleaned out or planted out before a different seed variety can be delivered to the seed meters. However, it is often quite difficult to determine when a given seed meter has been completely emptied of seeds to allow a new seed type to be delivered to the meter. As a result, current planting systems are typically ill-equipped to effectively and efficiently automatically switch between seed types during the performance of a planting operation.
Accordingly, a system and method for calibrating the sensors of a multi-variety seed meter to allow for increased accuracy and reliability when switching between seed varieties or types during a subsequent planting operation would be welcomed in the technology.